• After 15+ years, we've made a big change: Android Forums is now Early Bird Club. Learn more here.

charging time through usb

cashX3r0

cashX3r0

Well-Known Member
regular charging on the included charger is ~1100mA i think. i heard usb charging is rated at 100mA. how long will it take to charge from dead? and if i am tethering using easy tether will i still gain charge? (searched for this but came up with too many results.
 
iirc the included AC charger is 5V and 1A (1000mA) and on your computer's USB is 500mA i believe? when i tethered in the past with a windows phone, it will charge it at the same time from my laptop.
 
With USB it massively depends on if you are using it or just have it asleep. Asleep your still lookin at a number of hours, but if you are playing a game with sync active you might still manage to lose charge. ( Granted, virtually none. After a couple hours playing a game, texting, facebook...always with the game in the background at the very least, I did go down 1 percent. ) If it's asleep it'll be close to only double the normal time because as mentioned USB is half the current of the wall charger. ( Due to the phone still taking some charge from the USB during this time is why it'll be a little over double. )
 
USB charging from PC takes a long time... clicking on the jumbo-sized clock to open up HTC's clock app, and the battery status is on the bottom right corner. Usually takes about 6-7 hours for me to have it charged via PC, versus 2 hours from AC.
 
I actually managed to kill the phone while it was charging this morning. I was pretty shocked. It had died during the night so my alarm didn't go off. I forgot that when I put my laptop to sleep the USB ports are no longer active. So I wake up my laptop and the phone starts charging. I turn it on and bring up the mail client and bam black screen. After a few seconds of confusion I realize the phone had just died while charging. That is something else.
 
zanza said:
so he people who plan to use the "USB Car Lighter adapter" may be in for a slow charge?
Click to expand...

You should be fine, but do be aware that those were designed to light cigs not power electronics. This means they have no real standards ( IE: They can be pretty much anything from like 5 volts to 16 volts based on certain situations and the design and anywhere around 10 amps ), the power can fluctuate which isn't good for electronics and especially for charging Li-Ion batteries which want a specific voltage, and also the plug itself is not suited to power electronics...they can vibrate loose for example, or worse "flicker" supplying power on and off fast with the engines vibrations.

So: Car chargers are fine for the occasional "Woops, I forgot to charge my phone last night and I'm going to be on the road the next few hours" but daily charging will start to decrease your batteries life over time due to the fluctuations, intermittent connection, etc. Use a stable power source like a surge protected outlet for your normal charges.
 
I have run the battery down to nothing while using the phone on a USB port. I was apparently draining it faster than it provided a charge. It is probably harder to do that on the AC charger.

I also found that if you turn GPS, bluetooth, wifi off and brightness down it will charge faster as it has less battery load on it. At least that is the perception I have.
 
The amperage of a USB port on a computer varies but is a minimum of 100mA. It's impossible for us to tell you how much current your phone will be able to draw from your computer because it's not standard.
 
zemerick said:
You should be fine, but do be aware that those were designed to light cigs not power electronics. This means they have no real standards ( IE: They can be pretty much anything from like 5 volts to 16 volts based on certain situations and the design and anywhere around 10 amps ), the power can fluctuate which isn't good for electronics and especially for charging Li-Ion batteries which want a specific voltage, and also the plug itself is not suited to power electronics...they can vibrate loose for example, or worse "flicker" supplying power on and off fast with the engines vibrations.

So: Car chargers are fine for the occasional "Woops, I forgot to charge my phone last night and I'm going to be on the road the next few hours" but daily charging will start to decrease your batteries life over time due to the fluctuations, intermittent connection, etc. Use a stable power source like a surge protected outlet for your normal charges.
Click to expand...

I think that the better quality ones are regulated so it shouldn't be a problem. I had this one:

Scosche Dual USB Car Charger

which you can find on Amazon and Newegg and I think it was 1000ma output and regulated as well.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top Bottom